"New" Bard.

So they gave bard new party effects to his songs in SB but nerfed down his own dps, after ShB they cutted song effects but buffed bard's own dps. And in 5.1 they giving song effects again and nerfing his own dps.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My prediction for Bard in 5.5: again no party song effects and increase in dps xD

B -- balance.

it's inexplicable .....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

So they gave bard new party effects to his songs in SB but nerfed down his own dps, after ShB they cutted song effects but buffed bard's own dps. And in 5.1 they giving song effects again and nerfing his own dps.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My prediction for Bard in 5.5: again no party song effects and increase in dps xD

B -- balance.

---

I'll take this over 5.0 brd any day. It probably is still to weak but SE has been under tuning support dps out of fear of them being too strong with their buffs, and slowly bringing them back up.

this would be funny if it wasn't so sad, for simplicitys sake lets average out the dps buff for the group as 1%.
Grabbed a random 95% bard on voidwalker, group dps without lb was 89,700 so not just good bard, group average was 91, with the given group dps he would buff the group by 900~ dps, thats a good group, bad group would get less out of it.

So, lets correct the other skills for new potencies, would link the parse but yea forum and fflogs and all, feel free to hit me up if you want a name to double check stuff if you don't trust my math.

edit: seems to be even worse as it specifies "group" once again, so probably again not buffing the bard itself, so
group buff 1%=760 gained
sidewinder=(238/260*300)-238=36 gained
apex arrow=(489/500*600)-489=98 gained

stormbite:1176-(1176/60*50)=189 lost
caustic Bite:950-(950/50*40)=190 lost
refulgant arrow:2.833-(2.833/340*330)=83 lost

in total we got 760+36+98-189-190-83=432 dps gained for a 95% bard in a 91% group.
bards that are in theory on that level but with a 50% (so AVERAGE) group would get a good 80 dps less.

as a reminder

the weakest melee dps right now at 95% percentile voidwalker is 1200 dps above bard, thats nin that gets a rework so no idea but should hardly be a nerf considering both dragoon and samurai are above it at that level and get buffs.

So as it stands, even with the buffs and without further buffing melee bard would be 800~ dps behind the weakest melee, just that this weakest melee even got a damage buff themselves so the jump will be even higher, thats a slap in the face with ******* if i've ever seen one

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Akiudo

this would be funny if it wasn't so sad, for simplicitys sake lets average out the dps buff for the group as 1%.
Grabbed a random 95% bard on voidwalker, group dps without lb was 89,700 so not just good bard, group average was 91, with the given group dps he would buff the group by 900~ dps, thats a good group, bad group would get less out of it.

So, lets correct the other skills for new potencies, would link the parse but yea forum and fflogs and all, feel free to hit me up if you want a name to double check stuff if you don't trust my math.

group buff 1%=900 gained
sidewinder=(238/260*300)-238=36 gained
apex arrow=(489/500*600)-489=98 gained

stormbite:1176-(1176/60*50)=189 lost
caustic Bite:950-(950/50*40)=190 lost
refulgant arrow:2.833-(2.833/340*330)=83 lost

in total we got 900+36+98-189-190-83=572 dps gained for a 95% bard in a 91% group.
bards that are in theory on that level but with a 50% (so AVERAGE) group would get a good 80 dps less.

as a reminder

the weakest melee dps right now at 95% percentile voidwalker is 1200 dps above bard, thats nin that gets a rework so no idea but should hardly be a nerf considering both dragoon and samurai are above it at that level and get buffs.

So as it stands, even with the buffs and without further buffing melee bard would be 700~ dps behind the weakest melee, just that this weakest melee even got a damage buff themselves so the jump will be even higher, thats a slap in the face with ******* if i've ever seen one

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Idk what these numbers are on about but I guess song effects being back is still more of a nerf than a buff lol. Now bard again more valuable to the party...

...like it was in stormblood XD

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

Idk what these numbers are on about but I guess song effects being back is still more of a nerf than a buff lol. Now bard again more valuable to the party...

...like it was in stormblood XD

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they basically gave us a passive group buff for 750~ dps while nerfing our personal damage by 350-400 while buffing the lower end melees at the same time, is a sad joke and nothing else really

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

So they gave bard new party effects to his songs in SB but nerfed down his own dps, after ShB they cutted song effects but buffed bard's own dps. And in 5.1 they giving song effects again and nerfing his own dps.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My prediction for Bard in 5.5: again no party song effects and increase in dps xD

B -- balance.

---

I didn't read it as damage would be nerfed, i read it as MCH,BRD,DNC in terms of power.

Do we know yet if we're affected by our own song buff?
The patch notes use the same wording as Battle Voice, so I assume not, but maybe...?

Flipping through other jobs' party buffs, the ones I've looked at say "self and party members" so we're probably still not affected...

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Originally Posted by Raldo

Do we know yet if we're affected by our own song buff?
The patch notes use the same wording as Battle Voice, so I assume not, but maybe...?

Flipping through other jobs' party buffs, the ones I've looked at say "self and party members" so we're probably still not affected...

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No, we will likely not be affected by our own song buffs. We weren’t affected by them in 4.x, and the tooltips now read as those do: they only say “nearby party members”; not “nearby party members and self”. If we had been affected by them, they likely would have taken off more potency from us as compensation.

I know it’s silly to complain because Bards are getting what they wanted, but I feel like they could have done more.

I don’t have an issue with them nerfing Bard’s damage to make way for support, since that was kinda supposed to be the point of Bard in the first place. But then I think about how it will actually play, and ultimately it’s still going to be an Archer that coincidentally has musical instruments.

I don’t want to seem ungrateful or like I’m unhappy with the changes, because I do think they’re good. I guess I’d have just liked to have seen them make a little bit more effort.

Warden’s Paean still barely has a use in the majority of content. Nature’s Minne is still on a very long cooldown (though now at double the strength of Mantra), but then healers already have so little to heal and such powerful oGCDs that I’ve never felt like I’m actively supporting anyone when I use it. Troubadour is a role skill; there’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s sad they tacked on the flute spin animation (that is inexplicably longer than the gcd and makes you shoot arrows at an enemy whilst facing the opposite direction) just to make Bard seem like it has more ‘Bard-like’ elements than it actually does.

I’m not expecting some kind of job rework in a random patch since that would be too much lol, just some actual thought being put into whether it actually addresses people’s concerns

It’d probably be a very unpopular change but I was thinking they could have removed the damage potency on the main songs and had them buff the party instead. So basically instead of using some bizarre song attack magic that Jehantel forgot to mention in the Bard quests, you’d use it, it’d put a party buff up and start the song for Repetoire effects. Personally I think it’d be cool if they made it so that you could choose which song to use rather than following a strict rotation of Ballad -> Paeon -> cut at 10 seconds left -> Minuet -> repeat. Though I get that then you’d just be forced to do Minuet full time so it’s not a reasonable expectation

Given the way things for looking in terms of what they want to do with Bard in future, in terms of it being a medium, lower utility but infinite mobility job, I can’t see myself ever returning to it as my main. Which is a shame, because it’s been my main since halfway through 1.0 (I went through a Thaumaturge / Black Mage phase to start with lol). But I don’t want to play a job that focuses on pure DPS, even if it supports the party passively. I want to play a job with decent support capabilities that has to make active decisions about how to support the party whilst still maintaining high dps (for the job, not compared to others lol), hence why I generally play Scholar / Astrologian / Dancer.

I know it’s selfish to say ‘I want it to be like THIS!’ then just expect it to happen, which I think is why I’ve accepted I probably won’t return to the job as a main. There comes a time where you have to accept that something just isn’t for you anymore, and move on to something else that you do enjoy (even if it feels a little hollow). As much as I’d like for the developers to go back to the original Bard design as a support oriented class that casts songs to just support the party, can help out with healing a little and cast some support spells like Raise and Stoneskin, I have to accept that the developers want to go in the opposite direction with the job.

And to finish off this ridiculous sized post; if the developers want Bard to be about high DPS and mobility and less about support, does it really make much sense to then nerf their dps but very slightly increase their support? If the developers want to change their direction for the job to match player’s expectations surely it makes more sense to go all-in than try to have it both ways? Though that’s probably just bias talking lol

My only takeaway so far since we haven't had the opportunity to actually play with this, is that I'm livid that repertoire proc rates are STILL 20% before level 64 for whatever godawful reason. Bard doesn't really get to do much with that low of a proc rate, and now they're about to take a hit to their DoTs which affects their damage at all levels.

I feel sorry for anyone leveling Bard now. There's a reason I don't take my Bard into roulettes that have any chance of landing me in pre-70 content anymore.

I'm pleased that the Dev's are at least considering are requests and giving us some utility back, but I do hold with what seems to be the consensus, it's not enough. I won't get into the balance and numbers talk, because that honestly is just not one worth going down right now. It's very very clear that the devs believe range and mobility is a huge benefit that can't be quantified in numbers when you look at the changes to the ranged physical category. I don't agree with it but I will let that just sit and watch it play out over the expansion. And besides, numbers are something that can be very easily changed as time rolls on and the community starts to settle in on what jobs they don't want present.

What I will give feedback on though is the changes, because changes in design philosophy of a job is far harder to break, especially when community expectation is different then dev vision. Great work on Apex Arrow sound changes and increasing the range. I still would like to have it be a bit more of a guaranteed oGCD I can rely on and not an RNG timed GCD, but that's a flavor thing. Thank you for bringing back song buffs, but I'm still sensing hesitancy by the devs on putting Bard back into a more support oriented role. The song buff were the least interactive part of our 4.0 support kit and honestly was probably the least wanted support skill to have back save original Tactician. People were far more interested in getting back Foe's, refresh, palisade, or reworking Minne or Paen into much more premier abilities. Passive buffs are certainly nice, and add a little flavor but thats all it is.

Yoshi-P in the interview today said that for BRD to go back to its' Stormblood level of support, it would have to be put down to Dancers level of DPS. Again I'm going to leave alone the talk of actual DPS numbers, but I don't think the devs understand, we Bard mains who have been loving and playing this job for so long and very happy with a hybrid support and DPS identity are 100% ok with this and do not find that to be that big of a negative. Stormblood Bard is one of the gold standards the dev team has made in making an amazingly fun job, right up there with current black mage and 3.0 DRG. We loved Bard that way and want to be that way again. So my feedback to the devs is this. Thank you, may I please have some more?

It's at least somewhat not super selfish now! Overall, it's basically okay until they figure out that having a base proc chance and a dynamicly scaling proc chance with critical-hit, which would make bard and dancer way more fun to play (in general & lower levels) and reward specing it in crit and skill speed. This however is a good bandaid fix, atm, but it doesn't solve the core issues which would require larger changes and testing. Like, making SV into an resource and fixing several problems like wardens being a totally lesser esuna with a rediculous recast. And a lot of things that really need to be thought out like song supports being so unimpactful for years, or the physical ranged role in general being this huge DPS loss w/o the 1%-buff. And, even things like how a job feels to play. Erm, I really need to start putting some of my thought on paper. It's starting to give me headaches just not typing them up...

One of the things that need to change with bard is Apex Arrow. For example, Burst shot is 240 potency which makes Apex Arrow irrational to use until over 40 Soul
Gauge. Apex Arrow should be an OGCD ability for that reason alone. Any thoughts?

Apex as an OGCD would make the button at least somewhat less braindead and the idea was thrown around many times, since the first gameplay dropped. I'd like it.

What I would like to know is,

1. are the changes an outright nerf to light party bard? I mean, they clearly are for the solo bardo and I'm glad that I got a decently equipped MCH to switch to.

2. With bard/mch/dnc on an equal skill level, how good has the full party got to be, to make bard really worth picking over the others?

It was kind of expected, soooo many folks complained about Brd not feeling like a bard anymore, "give us our support songs back", yata yata. It SE of course, ya'll know they are very keen on keeping dps low when the job has a lot of utility and support, so yeah... Guess we'll see how it fairs, personally just wanted an apex fix; sound, bit more damage, and ogcd. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wish the song buffs also effect brd itself. Why we are deaf :< .

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

I'll take this over 5.0 brd any day.

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I'd prefer my contribution to come from my actions, rather than merely whether I exist within X yalms of my allies... If that can take the form of active support, all the better, but I'd rather have active damage-dealing alone than lose potency to passive ("You exist") support.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'd prefer my contribution to come from my actions, rather than merely whether I exist within X yalms of my allies... If that can take the form of active support, all the better, but I'd rather have active damage-dealing alone than lose potency to passive ("You exist") support.

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Well hopefully that will be what we can get added next. The dev team clearly either didn't agree, didn't listen, or didn't understand the type of support that Bard players were looking for, as I definitely didn't see Bard players everywhere clamoring to have the passive songs be added back on. Regardless I'd rather the dev team be taking steps like this even if it' not exactly what the players are looking for to try and meet players somewhere on their wants while keeping to their vision of the game. And seeing as the ranged DPS category right now is already near the bottom of the barrel in DPS anyway, I'd rather know I'm bringing something else then just my own damage. Especially when you look at a job like MCH, who clearly needs to be bringing near SAM and BLM levels of DPS to justify it's greedy play style. The passive buff is basically our version of Standard step now. A passive buff that we shell out by making sure we press a few damage buttons every minute.

On the whole, I don't know if what little rDPS we gain is going to even make up for the ~400 ppm we'll be losing, let alone act as a buff. If I had to guess, I'd suspect BRD will come in last place, led by the first quartet of SMN, DNC, RDM, and MCH, then NIN, then the higher quartet of DRG, SAM, BLM, and MNK.
So, I guess at least maybe all but one Ranged will escape the gutter, though still below melee and pure dps? That hardly seems worth cheering over...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by slare609

One of the things that need to change with bard is Apex Arrow. For example, Burst shot is 240 potency which makes Apex Arrow irrational to use until over 40 Soul
Gauge. Apex Arrow should be an OGCD ability for that reason alone. Any thoughts?

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Wouldn't it be just as sensible to simply have it start from 240 or 270-275 (Refulgent Arrow proc chance included) potency? Personally, I prefer it as a GCD. They need only adjust the potency to keep it intuitive. Imo, it shouldn't be better than Burst Shot until at least some 20-40 Gauge, and any early use should still be a mere waste.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'd prefer my contribution to come from my actions, rather than merely whether I exist within X yalms of my allies... If that can take the form of active support, all the better, but I'd rather have active damage-dealing alone than lose potency to passive ("You exist") support.

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I get what you're saying. But it doesn't seem like its "I just passively sit there and buff my group" and more "My reward for cycling through my rotation is to buff my allies" to me. That being said I can already visualize some ideas. Ranging from implementing Foe's, which while could still work on the 10k standardized mana, I keep wanting to see attached to the Soul Voice Gauge, to even things like Sidewinder debuffing the enemy with a small damage vuln if you execute it with both dots on the target. There is more then can do absolutely. I was just expressing my gratitude towards getting something back.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rika007

I'm pleased that the Dev's are at least considering are requests and giving us some utility back

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Ye, they gave us utility... again :D Why they took it back from us in first place? Because they didnt want Bard to compete with Dancer about whos a better support? Its even in job's lore that Bard is a support class, yet they made us pure DPS for some reason. Sometimes I just dont understand how come with zero class variability, SE still cannot balance classes decently lol. It was perfect before ShB, yet they go from one extreme to another, they give song effects, they take them back, they give them back again. They dont know what they want to do with bard so why even change what works just fine?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

Sometimes I just dont understand how come with zero class variability, SE still cannot balance classes decently lol. It was perfect before ShB, yet they go from one extreme to another, they give song effects, they take them back, they give them back again. They dont know what they want to do with bard so why even change what works just fine?

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From what I remember, they rework Bard every expansion because they’ve never been able to balance it properly, so they basically seem to want to just keep rolling the dice until it lands the way they want.

From how it seems to be they just flat out couldn’t be bothered finding a way to balance out support abilities, so they just deleted them all and replaced them with a generic ‘increases damage by X%’. Astrologian suffers the same problem. They created these support-oriented jobs, decided to remove all support abilities, then thought nobody would notice that the ‘support’ jobs had been gutted.

But I mean, none of this matters because we can just play Dancer? According to the developers, anyway. I don’t see any reason why Bard (and to a lesser extent Astrologian) had to have their support abilities removed other than solely to make Dancer more attractive. Maybe they thought that if Bard could still do something (literally anything) to actively support the party nobody would want to play Dancer?

I mean, would it really have invalidated Dancer both in terms of ‘meta’ and general popularity if Bard could still use Foe Requiem? Or if Minne / Paean worked like old songs so we could use them when they’re needed and not as their cooldown dictates? Hell, even if they had just kept the passive buffs but with the same effects we have now instead of the perma-crit boost

In terms of them removing/re-adding things, this is unfortunately a classic SE move at this point. See Energy Drain for a repeat; SE removed something for barely any reason, people ask for it back, they immediately acquiesce. And it’s anyone’s guess as to why they crumble so quickly for one popular request, then pretend another doesn’t exist (like adjusting the effects of Astrologian cards, or healer playstyles in general because of the 1 nuke 1 DoT thing). And I mean, Bards got their passive buffs back but there’s no sign of Foe Requiem ever being returned. Is it really too much to ask for something we’ve had for like 6 years to come back after they randomly removed it? Even if it’s with a different effect than a flat damage taken debuff

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Originally Posted by Connor

From what I remember, they rework Bard every expansion because they’ve never been able to balance it properly, so they basically seem to want to just keep rolling the dice until it lands the way they want.

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My opinion, if players are silent about a certain job, its balanced perfectly. In SB nobody complained about Bard being OP, nobody complained about Bard being weak either. If they are so keen on listening to their players, why they do not when its concerning initial job changes? It was a perfect job, yet they felt the need to change it for no reason and now they dont know what to do with it at all D:

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

I get what you're saying. But it doesn't seem like its "I just passively sit there and buff my group" and more "My reward for cycling through my rotation is to buff my allies" to me.

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That's fair. I just consider it passive because you don't have to do anything more than what you already do for your own personal damage; there's no point at which you'd ever stop cycling, or essentially just doing all the exact same things, even if the buffs didn't exist.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

That being said I can already visualize some ideas. Ranging from implementing Foe's, which while could still work on the 10k standardized mana, I keep wanting to see attached to the Soul Voice Gauge, to even things like Sidewinder debuffing the enemy with a small damage vuln if you execute it with both dots on the target. There is more then can do absolutely.

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Yeah, that would be right up my alley. I'd love anything with more control that makes me actually care about what my team will be doing and when.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

My opinion, if players are silent about a certain job, its balanced perfectly. In SB nobody complained about Bard being OP, nobody complained about Bard being weak either. If they are so keen on listening to their players, why they do not when its concerning initial job changes? It was a perfect job, yet they felt the need to change it for no reason and now they dont know what to do with it at all D:

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Let's be honest, people complained about brd being OP the whole expansion lol, often in the mch threads tho. lot of "pro player" considered brd being the most busted job of the expansion with scholar as a second job. Bard was just the most played job in the game and people dont like their job being nerfed, that's it

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

My opinion, if players are silent about a certain job, its balanced perfectly. In SB nobody complained about Bard being OP, nobody complained about Bard being weak either. If they are so keen on listening to their players, why they do not when its concerning initial job changes? It was a perfect job, yet they felt the need to change it for no reason and now they dont know what to do with it at all D:

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There were BRD mains that acknowledged that the job had issues with powercreep and crit scaling back in SB. I agree that 4.0 BRD is my favorite iteration of the job, but something had to be done to address that. Unfortunately, their re-addition of our song utility cost us DoT potency, which hurt BRD’s total damage and raid contribution more than I think the developers realized. It’s not uncommon to see it below DNC now at higher percentiles.

I’m not sure if this was because they overcompensated for the song effects, or for another reason. I lean towards overcompensating, because I wonder to myself if they think BRDs follow a 30-30-30 song rotation; not acknowledging that the +3% D.Hit song gets consistently clipped by 10 seconds (barring a few situations where one would want to extend it) and not considering what that would do to the overall contribution of the songs seems plausible to me—especially considering that there seems to be disconnect between the development/battle teams and the playerbase with regards to how most players play the jobs in content. Even if +3% D.Hit is likely the weakest buff of the three songs.

I wonder if some of the changes were made with the new Ultimate in mind.

Bard seems to be really good in the first 2 phases, as far as I can tell. You can consistently have 4 Dots up at once, so if they had left them on their old potency, maybe it would have been too strong.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

There were BRD mains that acknowledged that the job had issues with powercreep and crit scaling back in SB. I agree that 4.0 BRD is my favorite iteration of the job, but something had to be done to address that. Unfortunately, their re-addition of our song utility cost us DoT potency, which hurt BRD’s total damage and raid contribution more than I think the developers realized. It’s not uncommon to see it below DNC now at higher percentiles.

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The problem is that the way brd procs work, it's still hard to balance. In Alex Ultimate it's an op abomination because of multidotting, and it's by far the highest ranged dps. How do you balance a job like this when any scenario with 2-3 targets directly results in brd doing more dps than melee jobs?

But now in ultimate he looks in the First two phase really strong

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

The problem is that the way brd procs work, it's still hard to balance. In Alex Ultimate it's an op abomination because of multidotting, and it's by far the highest ranged dps. How do you balance a job like this when any scenario with 2-3 targets directly results in brd doing more dps than melee jobs?

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I haven’t tried out BRD in TEA, so I can’t comment on the damage it has in there. However, the last 2 weeks of E1S (the only fight in the tier with adds to really pad on) actually has BRD below both MCH and DNC despite DoTs and the ability to pad on the two adds and the meteors during second orb phase. Uploads between the three ranged DPS are very close, so there’s no skewing there.

DNC: 12,696
MCH: 12,483
BRD: 12,167

This is from the 95th percentile.

EDIT: just want to add that if BRD does significantly pull ahead in TEA compared to the other DPS, I still think it’s a bit flawed. Especially if it continues to lag behind everywhere else. Most high-end fights aren’t likely to have a solid ~2 phases where there are multiple targets up and about.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

The problem is that the way brd procs work, it's still hard to balance. In Alex Ultimate it's an op abomination because of multidotting, and it's by far the highest ranged dps. How do you balance a job like this when any scenario with 2-3 targets directly results in brd doing more dps than melee jobs?

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Create another tight dps check that's entirely single-target and keep the AoE phases from being a large portion of the overall fight. It's honestly fine for one job to greatly outdps another in a single part of a fight, so long as it doesn't make that much difference to the encounter as a whole. Will just have to see how the next Ultimate handles both that and severe mobility/uptime concerns...

That or you have to tone down multi-DoTs across Bard, SMN, and quite possibly even MNK, or SAM (in cases where the adds will last near to some multiple of full minutes), which is far less than ideal.

Also add fights are always a problem in raiding since they removed dots from a lot of jobs that can't just dot everything as a measure to keep up with specialized dot jobs like bard. Lead Shot for example was a decent way for MCH not to lag behind on add phases, but it concerns a lot of classes now. I find it a bit concerning tbh.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

My opinion, if players are silent about a certain job, its balanced perfectly. In SB nobody complained about Bard being OP, nobody complained about Bard being weak either. If they are so keen on listening to their players, why they do not when its concerning initial job changes? It was a perfect job, yet they felt the need to change it for no reason and now they dont know what to do with it at all D:

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Are you kidding me????

I suppose we MCHs were not the most numerous and visible but damn it we spent our time complaining about BRD balance during the whole expansion... The crit scaling and party support were completely busted.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valence

Can we stop for once nitpicking about ridiculously low differences between ranged physical jobs and actually address what truly matters, which is ranged physical versus everyone else?

Also add fights are always a problem in raiding since they removed dots from a lot of jobs that can't just dot everything as a measure to keep up with specialized dot jobs like bard. Lead Shot for example was a decent way for MCH not to lag behind on add phases, but it concerns a lot of classes now. I find it a bit concerning tbh.

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well aside from ultimate i wouldn't call a nearly 500 dps difference going from mch to bard, ridiculously low, i would call it "acceptable" if this was going from the top, the point that its not 500 from the top but from mch , which is basically king of the nerds in this scenario sadly does make it somewhat of a bigger problem than it would normally be.

on bard being strong in ultimate though i agree with you, the problem with add fights is that the chance to basically permanently multidot is not just not the norm, its so much the exception we get around 1 fight like this every 2 years or so, balancing around that would be like taking only the 100% top parse of blm on voidwalker and arguing that makes it fine, even if blackmage in every other fight of the game would be lagging behind by 1000 dps.

This however is on the devs, they either need to design fights with that in mind or normalize multidotting and aoe potential, they did this with things like aoes doing less damage on the second target onwards, make it so say bard only gets 2 chance for repertoire proccs even if there are 4 or more dots active and maybe even make it so their dots get weaker on more targets, give other classes other reasons why "fighting 2 adds is better for them" , give mch back lead shot, make it so dragoon jumps are so potent whenever they drop from the skys they send out a small shockwave hitting every mob currently active in a 30y radius, make verholy/flare aoe, (these are just mechanical examples of things that could be done, please no one reply to that with "that would be op" or whatever, it were just examples of the top of my head and number balancing is on the devs) like no don't make it so everyone is exactly the same, but if some classes get way more out of a second add than others find ways to get this difference closer together just like with single targets, but a class (like bard in this case) isn't fine just because it gets better under very specific circumstances which happens like once every 2 years.

All that talk about AoE padding DPS kinda goes down the drain when you consider that:
- Most of the fights that count for anything are single target (bosses).
- Ads having buffs that make you have to split them up.

Which brings us back to ranged DPS either needing more support abilities or a balancing up in the damage output department. In the case of Bards, give the proc-based nature, a third DoT would be nice, specially now that the two existing ones got unnecessarily nerfed.